Slave Empire - The Crystal Ship (22 page)

The surfeit of
tendrils seemed to be at an end, and many of those that wound
around him were already truncated by previous bouts. This
handicapped them, and they were easy to kick away. Coming closer to
the Envoy also brought them close to the tube mouths, which tore
into his legs under the fluid, the sharp teeth shredding his skin
when he kicked. Others went for Rayne, who groaned as she shared
his pain. He ducked under the surface to stab the tubes, driving
some away. Dragging his charge, he headed for the bank. Soldiers
were easier to dispatch than the tubes.

Near the
Envoy’s beached forepart, he encountered another set of tube mouths
above the fluid. They attacked, and he hacked at the place where
they sprouted from the Envoy’s flank with the fighting blade. The
severed tubes sank into the sea, twitching and writhing. Standing
in the chest-deep liquid, he pulled Rayne close and took a much
needed rest between the dangers of sea and shore. Blood from his
lacerated legs stained the glowing liquid pink around him. Some
soldiers entered the sea to try to reach him, but sank before they
could.

Rayne lived in
a world of intense pain and pleasure. The vast sensations filled
her mind to the brim, threatening to crush her sanity. The Ship’s
agony coursed through her in a searing tide, and she ached with it;
her fingers throbbed and her head pounded. The Envoy’s pleasure
flowed into every part of her in tingling spasms of delight and
sweet sensations of intense enjoyment that she channelled back to
him, causing him great anguish. She fought to cling to
consciousness, knowing that if she lost it she would lose the
battle, and their lives.

The Ship keened, its gentle sentience struggling with the
Envoy’s brutal awareness, his agony tempering his mental abilities.
Both were losing. As the battle neared its conclusion, Scrysalza
died with the Envoy. Rayne twitched with distress.
Which tendril,
she
asked, and the Ship showed her a mass of ganglia beneath the Envoy,
all different colours, but a blue one stood out. She was aware of
Tarke holding her, and tried to rise through the psychic turmoil to
warn him.

The Envoy
sensed her plan and dragged her back, flogging her with his pain,
which now overpowered his pleasure. The circle had eroded to pain
breeding pain, and his reflected agony redoubled his suffering
again and again. He loved the pain of others, but not his own. Even
the Ship’s suffering brought him little satisfaction now. She
fought him, and the Ship helped to build a shield around her. For a
brief instant, she returned to reality like a diver rising to the
air.

Tarke started
when the girl opened her eyes and gripped his arm.

“
The blue one, cut it!” she yelled, then her eyes glazed and
closed again.

“
Blue what?” Tarke frowned at her, dazed by the telepathic
barrage that hammered his skull. He pondered her words, trying to
divine their meaning. A weak tentacle grabbed his arm, and he
wrenched free, watching the soldiers pace the shore. He groaned as
he realised what she meant.

“
Where is it?” he asked, patting her cheek to try to rouse her
again. “Where?”

His efforts
proved fruitless, but he was leery of using harsher methods to
bring her back to reality, in case he jeopardised her battle with
the Envoy. It had to be under the alien somewhere. That was where
all the tentacles originated, and diving into their midst would be
dangerous. If Rayne had revived to tell him, however, it meant the
Envoy was trying to kill the Ship. It also meant the Envoy was
dying. How could he leave her undefended, though? Nowhere was safe
from the Envoy. It had soldiers on the shore and tentacles in the
sea. What was he supposed to do with the girl? He came to a
decision. The job had to be done; there simply was no other
way.

Tarke used the
fighting blade to cut a strip of skin from the Envoy’s side, making
it thick and strong. He lifted the girl and pulled her hand from
the tentacle, transferring it to the strip of skin. He did the same
with her other hand, so she held the strip of skin instead of the
submerged tendril. This way, he hoped that if a tentacle grabbed
her while he was away, she would be able to hold herself out of the
fluid until he returned.

“
Hold onto this,” he told her. “I think you can hear me, so
hold onto it and don’t let go.”

Tarke eyed the
submerged part of the Envoy. He had lost his sword, but retained
the fighting blade and several daggers. The mask would hamper him,
for it was not designed to be worn underwater, and would take a
little while to drain when he surfaced; precious seconds that could
spell the difference between life and death. The girl was lost in
her own world, and the aliens did not care. He pulled off his
gloves and threw them onto the shore, then unclipped the mask and
stripped it off. The touch of air on his face was strange, and he
took the opportunity to rub it, easing the itch of the drying
fluid. He threw the mask onto the shore, making the soldiers turn
and hop. His hands’ slight tremor warned him of his growing
weakness, but he took a deep breath and dived.

Swarms of
blood beasts pummelled him, and he had to claw his way through them
to gain depth. A tentacle lay still in the liquid, writhing gently
as the blood beasts pushed past it. The Envoy loomed over him, the
blood beasts’ lurid glow lighting it from below. He studied its
pitted, shaggy skin as he pushed his way deeper, forced to go close
to see anything at all. Tendrils hung from the alien’s underbelly,
vanishing into the sea below. It had to be one of them, but in the
red light they all appeared to be black or red. How the hell was he
supposed to find a blue one?

Tarke cursed
and sliced through a dozen of them with the fighting blade. He
would have to cut them all. His lungs burnt, and he fought his way
to the surface, dashing liquid from his eyes. The girl still clung
to the flap of skin. He took another breath and dived again,
groping through the swarms of blood beasts.

Reaching the
ganglia, he hacked at them, finding some tougher than others. A few
were like steel wire, and he had to saw through them. He surfaced
again, checked on the girl, then dived back to his task. There
seemed to be no end to the ganglia beneath the Envoy, and other,
thick hawsers ran down into the depths. If the alien’s entire
underside was forested with ganglia, it might take him a week to
cut them all.

Tarke surfaced
yet again, snorting fluid, and glanced at the girl. Regaining his
wind, he dived again, and this time he examined the ganglia,
searching for darker colours. Blue, in a red light, would be black,
and there were fewer black ganglia than red, so he concentrated on
them. Some might, in reality, be brown or green or purple, but one
might be blue. His task went quicker, and he surfaced halfway down
the Envoy.

Rayne was
quite far away now, and he realised that by the time he reached the
end of the massive beast, she would a long way off. Too far for him
to reach quickly. What if he had already cut the right ganglion? He
could be wasting precious energy now. He started towards her, but
when he was halfway back to her, a tentacle rose from the sea and
slid around her neck, pulling her under. He shouted her name and
redoubled his efforts, fighting through the seething liquid.

Rayne was only
vaguely aware of her danger. Her mind was locked in the dim world
of mental suffering, and a burgeoning emptiness filled her. The
psychic struggle was now little more than a torpid mingling of
hostile minds, and both aliens were dying. The soldiers’ venom was
poisoning the Envoy, and Scrysalza sank with him, linked to him in
death. She had been waiting for that link to be broken, for the
Ship to leap free and live, but it had not happened. The soup of
sensations was merely a backdrop to the struggle of two dying
minds, and she had little purpose in the psychic realm now, other
than to help the Ship.

Rayne sensed
her lungs burning for air, and fought intuitively as a tendril
squeezed her. The last of the Envoy’s strength was channelled into
it to exact his revenge. She tried to breathe, her air escaping in
a stream of bubbles. The Ship brushed her mind with a gentle, sad
presence, longing to help, but without the strength. Panic pierced
the emptiness within her, and she thrashed, gagged and inhaled a
rush of fluid. The panic faded as darkness washed over her, and she
sank.

Tarke dived
and caught hold of the limp girl, cutting the tendril around her
throat as he lifted her to the surface. She coughed and retched as
he waded ashore, noticing that the soldiers had vanished. Putting
her down, he knelt beside her. Twilight seemed to have fallen on
this strange world. The glowing sea had dimmed to a dull redness,
and shadows filled the huge cavern. He knew what it meant. He had
failed to cut the blue ganglion.

The Crystal
Ship was dying, and he had not sensed the slipping, twisting
sensation that indicated it was crossing from one dimension to
another. As far as he knew, they were still in the void dimension.
Rayne was half drowned and not likely to wake up soon. It was up to
him.

The prospect
of touching another mind, and letting it touch his, was abhorrent,
but he had no choice. Closing his eyes, he thinned his mental
shields, allowing the whisper of alien minds to reach his. The
Envoy’s harsh mentality was a hazy collection of foul memories; the
alien had already slipped into a coma. A gentle presence touched
him with gossamer thoughts of light and magical dancing stars,
flitting away. He sent reassurance to it and opened himself
further, filling his mind with sympathy and compassion. It brushed
his psyche again and learnt his name. A weak delight suffused it, a
childlike gladness to meet him in its final hours of life.

Return us to the second dimension,
he urged it, wary of frightening it.
You promised.

I am Scrysalza,
it told him, and
opened itself, flooding him with a vista of beautiful
images.
Know me. I am dying.
Its sorrow inundated him, and he urged it again
to return to the second dimension. The Ship keened, and he sensed
the gathering of its failing power. Space and time twisted as the
Ship rose into the universe once more. He shared his relief and
gratitude with it, sharing its sorrow.

Let me help you,
he said,
I can save you.

The blue one,
it whispered, its
awareness fading.

Where?

An image
formed, of glowing ganglia in a red sea. A blue strand stood out, a
pulsing link that was killing it.

Tarke opened
his eyes and surveyed the Envoy’s bulk in the growing gloom. He
knew exactly where it was now, and marched down to the shore again.
Diving in, he swam and crawled through the dying blood beasts,
desperation lending him strength. He had to save the Ship. His
contact with its gentle beauty had convinced him of that.
Exhaustion weighed his limbs like lead shackles. Reaching the
centre of the Envoy, he dived, pushing his way through sluggish,
sinking blood beasts.

The huge bunch
of ganglia loomed out of the mass, glowing with different colours.
The blue one pulsed strongly, and he grasped it. The slight shocks
made his muscles jump as he hacked at it with the fighting blade,
his air running out. The ganglion had the strength of tempered
steel, and he was forced to surface for air before he severed it.
He dived again, adrenalin wringing the last dregs of energy from
his flagging muscles. The ganglion parted, and he pushed himself
upwards, wondering if he was going to make it to the surface. He
did, and lay gasping amongst the blood beasts.

It took him
several minutes to reach the shore, and he dragged himself onto it
with the last of his strength, flopping down. He wondered if he had
been too late, for he could no longer sense the Ship’s presence.
The air was cooler, and the gloom almost complete. Too tired to
think clearly, he rolled onto his stomach and let the oblivion of
exhaustion claim him.

Chapter Eleven

Tallyn stared
at the Crystal Ship with intensity born of worry and frustration.
Two hours ago, it had returned from the void dimension after
vanishing for several minutes, but it had changed drastically
during that short time. It no longer glowed, and nor did Net energy
flicker around it as before. It seemed almost dead, its crystal
wings glittering with reflected light, but not throwing out the
vibrant beams of coherent brilliance. Much of its beauty had gone
with its inner fire, but it still shone like a massive diamond.
Most importantly, it had stopped, and now hung in space.

He glanced at
Marcon. “Well?”

“
It seems to be dead, if you ask me.”

“
That’s not very illuminating. What do the sensors
say?”

Marcon
consulted the holograms. “Not much. According to them, it’s about
the same. It just has a lot less power.”

“
It’s still alive?”

“
We never did establish if it was actually alive,
sir.”

Tallyn
snorted. “Could we board it now?”

“
I wouldn’t recommend it. Although the energy shell is gone,
it’s still sheathed in several tens of metres of solid
crystal.”

“
Could we transfer aboard?”

Marcon shook
his head. “I wouldn’t. We don’t know whether the atmosphere inside
is breathable, nor do we know where to transfer to. I’d hate to end
up in its stomach.”